Oh, don’t worry, this isn’t about food or wine. I wouldn’t want you to nod off on me.
Given my workload lately, my columns have taken a dryer tone. I was burning out, like R&B artist Shaggy when he ran out of songs to sample.

But after some time off, I’m feeling back to my own rambling, irreverent self.

(more…)

OK, that’s probably not what you’d expect a Unitarian Universalist minister to come up with for a title of a New Year’s piece, but that’s my frame of mind this Sunday morning and I’m gonna claim it.

I’m even going to go with the Jerry Falwellesque notion that this great big glorious global economic mess is a message from God. Something like this—God to Earthlings: “Attention all you who are mourning and gnashing your teeth as the stock markets tanks, the housing crisis grows, and the global food crisis spreads. Turn away from your pathetic life of getting and spending, for it leads you to a path of poverty and suffering! Time and time again I’ve offered you something better. Why don’t you listen to my son for a change?” (more…)

Although the winter months are often associated with warm, happy feelings as we spend time with family and loved ones, there are many who find themselves troubled with depression during this time of year. Depression is the most common mental illness, striking approximately 19 million Americans each year, and is often indiscriminate in the people whom it affects. (more…)

Here we are again, it’s that time of year. The snow has begun to fall. Decorations are strung to light our way. All around us we sense the heightened expectation and much awaited anticipation of adults and children now probably more then any other season during the year. It seems as though everyone is somehow transformed.

Being a father I’m often reminded of Christmas when I was a child, a time when the Charlie Brown Christmas special and the Grinch could only be seen once a year on TV, before CDs and videos, when we had to wait all year to see it, and, and if you missed it, you had to wait another year. It was a time before stores stocked for Christmas before Thanksgiving, a time when I was busting at the seams to go with my dad and brother to treasure hunt for the perfect Christmas tree. (more…)

With every Christmas comes an inherent sense of hope. And as 2008 staggers to a beleaguered, merciful close, hope arrives as a manifestly high commodity for many.

As for me, I just simply want to turn on the boob tube and witness my favorite shows exercising an attribute that’s been sorely lacking since September: quality. In case you haven’t noticed, most of TV’s primetime lineup has become primetime throw-up since the fall season kicked off.  Many of these shows now find themselves in the precarious position of being canceled, and even those that are surreptitiously surviving the ratings wars are merely running on petrol fumes. (more…)

It was a cold night last night. The lights of Christmas were on the houses. My car radio was scanning through stations, some playing Christmas carols. It felt a lot like Christmas, then a Christian Radio talk show host started talking about Islamic Fundamentalism and terrorism, and I wondered about peace and glad tidings to all. (more…)